Words
by deaka
Summary: Leia and Luke grieve in different ways. Han supplies the alcohol. Leia character piece, set between ANH and ESB.


**Title:** "Words"  
**Characters:** Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo  
**Era:** OT, post-ANH  
**Warnings: **Alcohol, angstiness

**Summary: **Leia indulges in some overdue angst. And tact is not Luke's strongest asset. Or: the different ways in which Leia and Luke grieve.

* * *

When Luke talks about his homeworld, Leia wants to hit him.

Not all the time. On good days, she doesn't think about it. It's just Luke, with his strange brand of impetuosity; words are small things to scatter, for him, and he releases them carelessly, a thing Leia has never been able to afford to do.

Most of the time it's fine.

"… never anything to do. Oh, there was Tosche Station, but my uncle normally wouldn't let me go anyway. Sometimes he did. Then we'd go out hunting womp rats or flying Beggar's Canyon, oh, and there was sandskimming, too. Otherwise we'd sit and stare at the walls. The only excitement was if there was a sandstorm in the area. And one time someone found a rock formation that looked like a bantha. People talked about that for _years_."

… and then there are the other times.

Sitting in the _Falcon_'s hold, Han and Luke and her, drinking strange-tasting alcohol. Leia's careful not to ask Han where it comes from. Luke says nothing, so maybe Han is supplying the pilot ranks too, or he's told Luke to keep his mouth shut. Maybe the pilot ranks are supplying Han. Contraband is not her job, Leia tells herself firmly.

"… and the suns. Who would _choose_to live on a world with two suns? How stupid do you have to be?"

Luke is a little drunk. Oddly, he never seems to pass a certain point of drunkenness however much he drinks, even though Leia suspects Han has tried to push him there a few times. Han says something in reply about people living in weirder places, and he may be speaking more carefully, only discernible because Leia is looking for it; it's the sole observable mark of alcohol intake Leia's ever noticed in him.

Leia is not drunk. She never is. She can't afford to be.

"Come on. Mining water from a desert? It's the most pointless existence in the galaxy. It's the most pointless _planet_in the galaxy. I should know."

A little drunk is all it takes. Luke talks about Tatooine every time. He complains about its empty skies and the underground homes and the heat and the sand and the suns. He complains about the womp rats. Once he starts, he talks and talks, and it's like he can't stop. The words are thick with mockery, but there's something beneath, something like anger. As though he's trying to purge something but can't get a grip on the words. As though he's trying to atone for something.

And Leia wants to hit him. Wants to punish him and the world he hates so much, the place that bears his memories and forms the backdrop to his dreams, the place in which he grew and was shaped into the person he now is. The world that still exists.

How is it fair, she wonders, that a world like his – a sandridden, lawless, featureless world, a world without culture or beauty or art, a world he disdains filled with people he despises – how is it fair that it continues in its orbit while Leia's planet is dust? Why couldn't _it_have been destroyed, that planet he loathes and plans never to return to, the guardians and friends he barely seems to feel a connection to, and Leia's cherished world and treasured loved ones saved?

It's a childish impulse and an ugly thought, and Leia hates that it's hers. She's supposed to have the control of a diplomat, a politician; supposed to possess a calm voice to run counter to hasty thoughts, a voice with the ability to soothe tempers and select the right words and the correct response, to act with empathy and compassion no matter the stakes. But the diplomat and the politician are numb. She sits in the silence of strangled fury, unable to speak for all the multihued emotions choking her as they clamour to be enclosed in words.

Luke has no greater purpose than an empty scramble to place the changes in his life, his words as meaningless the sand they describe. Han's looking at her like he knows what she's thinking, and that's not fair; she's betrayed nothing, and he can't possibly guess. Luke's still talking, something about the smell of sandstorms. Leia closes her hands around her drink, shuts her eyes, and thinks about walking out.

—for a moment she thinks she can almost taste harsh, desert-baked air, see the orange haze of light filtering through a sand-laden atmosphere to frame the silhouette of a heavyset man on the edge of a bluff above—

Her eyes blink open. She knows there's nothing waiting for her if she walks out but an empty bunk and the quiet, irrepressible dark of a ship in hyperspace. And she is afraid to run, just as she's afraid to drink, because she's not sure she will be able to stop once she begins.

"That's enough," Han says – and Leia's looked up, guilty and startled, before it registers that he's speaking to Luke and not to her.

Luke blinks, and so does she. Han leans forward, into Luke's eyeline, and says, "It's not your fault."

Luke stares at him for a long moment, then gets up and turns away.

Leia sets down her drink, stands and steps into the corridor. Han is a step or so behind her. She turns toward the sleeping berths, but stops as Han reaches for her arm. His fingers brush lightly and drop away, and she suddenly realises she can't remember when she last touched another person, for intimacy's sake or otherwise.

"You okay?" Han asks.

Leia smiles, brief and with hidden bitterness, like the overripe summer fruit from her childhood that no longer exists. "I'm fine."

Han frowns. His fingers twitch as if to reach out, but his hand stays low as Leia turns and walks down the long corridor on her own.

-end-


End file.
